In a world increasingly shaped by fragmentation, social, political, and ecological uncertainty, the slow, intentional act of making by hand offers a path back to wholeness. As Executive Director of Craft Contemporary, and as a first-generation Guatemalan immigrant of Maya descent, I have come to see craft as both a personal inheritance and a public responsibility. To work with one’s hands is to resist the detachment and disposability of modern life. It is also to remember what it means to be human in relationship to others, to place, to story, and to Mother Earth.
Craft Contemporary was founded by Edith R. Wyle (1918–1999) on a simple yet radical idea: that art and life are intertwined, and that the handmade object is not separate from, but central to, culture. Edith was an artist, activist, cultural pioneer, and what many affectionately called “the high priestess of folk art.” She believed that the handmade held power, that craft was not only art but also identity, tradition, and truth.
